small bites, from an unusual plate

Tag Archives: dogs

After we finished laughing, Jeff and I agreed that it had really just been a matter of time until she figured it out for herself. We were wrong.

Sadie made a few more leap-over attempts, but obviously never caught on that she’d need momentum. She scared herself silly with the first crash and caught her foot in the mesh on her second. She must have decided that particular risk it wasn’t worth it, because her tactics changed.

One day she sat staring into through the hallway door, whining pitifully. We’d both taken a turn checking out what the problem was. The first time, Jeff searched for her red ball, and came back empty handed. The second time, I figured something must really be wrong for Sadie to be so insistent.

Her ball definitely wasn’t on the inside side of the gate, but, ahhh …. Miss Fred was. I scooped Sadie up and told her she was being a silly dog. Freddie immediately jumped the fence, flattened her ears in displeasure, shook a front paw at both of us, and took off the other end of the house.

It wasn’t the last time Sadie’d ask to be let into litter box heaven. She’d prance back and forth from the hallway door to the den and try to catch our eye, hoping we’d follow.

After a few times, we were on to her, but bless her goofy puppy heart she’d would whine jealously about Fred being inside and her being outside.

She’d lie on her belly, back legs tucked, front legs stretched out ib front of her and eventually let out a loud sigh of frustration. She even had the almost teary, super sad eyes of an abused animal commercial pitch, many of which I’d seen over the years. Sadie was certainly dramatic.

Jeff and I became accidentally more educated on Sadie’s particular type of different. Nothing that interesting was on TV, so Jeff shuffled through channels until he landed on Animal Planet. In some sort of agility course event, appropriately sized Jack Russells were weaving and jumping and plowing through tubes. Just when it seemed like the contest was over, the announcer said something about the need to reset the course from the Smalls to the Talls.

I looked over at Jeff who was looking over at me. “Sadie!” I exclaimed. She catapulted to the couch from a complete sleep.

She had no idea what I was saying, but she happily kissed my chin, energetically struggled out of my grasp, bounced off the couch, ran in a circle and took off a full run. In a flash, she was back – gripping her prized red ball.

Sadie continue to tall-up. She was adorable and sweet and fun, just different. Maybe not so smart, but sometimes smarter than us. We solved the litter-box raids by putting up a baby gate at the door to the laundry room. For the first few days, she’d do a double-take whenever she passed it.

A few days later Sadie seemed to realize what she was missing. She’d stop and sit, stare longingly into the laundry room for a few seconds, huff and then hoof it. She was also obsessed with the red ball.

She really loved that cheap dollar-store firm foam orb. As far as toys go, Sadie never touched the kong. Squeaky toys were instantly dismantled; pieces strewn about were discarded. Somehow, she always managed to hide the squeaker part somewhere obscure. We’d look for them, but never once found one. There’d suddenly be a squeeze frenzy days later. Many times, while one of us was on the phone and often after we’d been asleep for a bit.

Jeff discovered he could keep her entertained longer by sending her on longer indoor fetches. He had perfected a double bounce that would propel the ball into the dining room. He achieved that by launching the ball toward the right wall of the hallway, where it angle-bounced to the left wall. From there it flew it into the dining room and if Jeff and Sadie were lucky, the ball would deflect off a chair and travel toward the living room.

That worked well until the day Sadie bounded after her red ball as it bounced off the hall wall into the laundry room. I watched in fascinated dread as it seemed she would easily clear our brilliant barrier. Sadie flew after it, naturally jumping right over our stop-gap.

“Sadie! No!” I cried out. But my sudden loud outburst hadn’t slowed her down at all. When she didn’t reappear, I slammed the recliner footrest down, stumbling away from a startled Jeff. He hadn’t quite processed what was going on, partly because he couldn’t see around the corner and mostly because I hadn’t filled him in.

“Oh, no! No, no, no no no!” I wailed in dismay. By the time I arrived at the entry door, Sadie was snout deep in Miss Fred’s refuse.

Jeff was halfway out of his chair with alarm, yelling back, “What? What?”

Sadie smiled happily at me, picked up her ball, took a running start and just as easily re-cleared the gate on her way back to Jeff.

“You bounced the ball into the laundry!” I huffed. “She jumped the gate and got into the litter again.”

“Oh, that’s no big deal,” Jeff poo-poo’ed me. “That’s what dogs do.”

“Just now!” I emphasized. “Right before she picked up that … that ball with her POTTY mouth and gave it to you.”

Jeff looked down at his hand. “Arrrgghhhh!” His situational assessment was shortly followed by “EEWWWWWWW!” and a forceful arm catapult as the ball went whizzing by my head.

I learned that runt meant Sadie was just behind the doggie curve… not destined to remain inherently mellow.

Miss Fred learned she could hide under the wooden rocking chair, shoot her left paw out and slap Sadie’s face as our tireless pup ran by in pursuit of her red ball.

We doggedly tried to get that on video tape, sure we could with $10,000 on America’s Funniest Videos. Back then video meant a large clunky machine with a blinding light near the lens. It didn’t help that it needed to be retrieved from the office closet, either. We left it out on the dining room table for a very long time. Freddie never cooperated.

Jeff learned something, too. “Hmm,” he said self-quizzically one day, after Sadie got into what Jeff humorously named the “no-bake doggie buffet.” She’d root around in Fred’s box and stealthily eat the crunch-coated brown stuff. The thing is she wasn’t as stealth as she thought, but by the time we saw the cat litter impacted in her nostrils, the deed had already been done. “Ya know,” he said thoughtfully. “I don’t think I’d ever heard you yell – before we got a dog.”

At about 6 months old Sadie had appropriately doubled her width, but something wasn’t quite right.

As she grew, her legs grew to twice the expected height. She wasn’t quite sure what to do with her long limbs, either. Instead of a low-to-the-ground JR scoot, Sadie pranced around like Bambi.

I said to Jeff, “I don’t think she’s normal.” Jeff glanced over at me and asked, “What do you mean?”

“I mean… her legs, and her tail…” I pointed to where Sadie stood smiling. “She shouldn’t be that tall. She’s like a Jack Russell on stilts! And her tail? Is it supposed to be that long….?”

Jeff tilted his head to that doggie-don’t-understand angle. After a beat, he peered over his glasses at me. “I told ya she looked different and probably wouldn’t get adopted…”

I tilted my head to an unnatural angle even for a dog and said, “What?”

“Yeah,” he said shrugging his shoulders. “She didn’t look like the other ones…. and her tail didn’t get docked because she was too tiny and weak.”

I struggled with this news. “She was weak?” I asked. “Sickly?” I asked. “We got a defective dog?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Jeff said eyeballing me cautiously. He gnawed on his bottom lip, took a big breath and sighed. Looking at the floor, he pressed his lips together like he was trying to come up with the just right thing to say. Nodding once to himself, he looked up and continued on patiently, “That’s what runt means.…”

I held the quiet girl for a little bit. She was content to stay there. Then I set in her down into my cross-legged lap. She was content to stay there. The other one was alternately exploring and then running back full speed that usually ended with him crashing into me.

Little Miss Mellow stood up at the sound of Jeff’s voice, reporting. “Well, they’re both healthy and vaccinated, that but one probably won’t go,” he said. “She’s the runt, and she looks different.” Her white fur was all-over dotted with rusty-reddish spots and a few large black and brown cow patches laid over. She looked like a regular JR to me.

I watched the other possibility tearing around performing frantic puppy antics, and glanced back down at the placid little lap dog. I scooped her up, handed her up to Jeff and lifted myself off the ground. He cradled her in his large arms, but she had other ideas. She crawled up his chest, snuggled up to his ear, offered a few licks, and with a serene sigh, closed her eyes.

We named her “Sadie.” There were a few other choices, but after a bit of name-calling testing that seemed to be the one she liked. Yes, we ‘asked’ her through testing and response rate. It was Jeff’s idea. He said it helps to name a dog something they’ll respond to.

Her name confused my mother a little. “I thought you said she was a girl,” she commented. “She is a girl,” I replied. “Oh, you know that’s Yiddish for ‘grandfather’ right?” she asked. “No, no,” I clarified, “Sadie! Not Zayde.” Jeff got a knee-slapping kick out of that.

She was sweet and social but strangely low-key. I mean veeerrrryyy low-key. She had a good appetite for such a petite pup. She stayed near us and moved at good walking pace whenever one of us left the room. She wasn’t a barker or a whiner and she had no interest in Miss Fred, at all.

She happily and quietly greeted me when I came home. Mostly, though, she followed Jeff. Mostly, because he was the one with her all day.

“I don’t think she’s normal,” I said to Jeff after she’d been with us a week.

“She’ll catch up,” he said. “Remember she’s the runt.”

Sadie’s first real play visitors were Jeff’s sister’s girl and boy. Used to having dogs of their own, the two got right down on the floor with her. Through the ear scratching and belly rubbing and tickling and the children making whelping puppy noises, Sadie widened her eyes, but stayed put.

She seemed confused, and didn’t seem like she was enjoying any of it all that much. I was just about to ask them to give her a break. Before I could get the words out, though, Sadie barrel-rolled away from them, jumped to her feet, gave a small hoarse bark (her first) and took off running. In between flat out sprints from one end of the house to the other, she’d circle the kids, drop to her front elbows and startle herself by barking.

Kelsey came into my life purposefully from the Nashville Humane Society. She was a three-legged motherless German Shepherd/Sheltie mix I met after the NHS experienced a fire. I’d gone to foster a cat, but was ambushed by a wicked fast furball that jumped into my lap, snuggled up under my ear and held on as if her life depended on it. She was so seriously quick, I didn’t notice her missing leg until I put her down a good 15 minutes later.

OK, back to the TN litter experience….

Cab was a black lab mix puppy from a purebred chocolate lab and … some other type of dog. This puppy boy was talkative in the way Cab Calloway sang: Ayow, ayowa, yowa, yow. He ambushed me with cuteness and sang the entire time I was driving. Yes, beginning in Tennessee, all the way to Michigan.

Anticipating the same sort of scenario in Michigan, I was determined not to reach in anywhere or pick anyone up. Jeff seemed to know the farmer that let us into the dog run area. The man didn’t stick around, closing the gate behind him as he left. “I’m gonna finish my dinner,” he said. “Let me know when you’re done.”

We rounded a corner were completely ambushed by steady stream of roly-poly Jack Russell tumblers. I stopped moving at once and must have looked as surprised and terrified as I felt, because Jeff stopped, too. “What?” he asked.

“I don’t want to squish one!” I faltered. He laughed and advised me to move slowly.

“There are more in the barn,” he explained, grabbing my hand.

My eyebrows shot up and my eyes narrowed. “And you would know this how?” I inquired. “Because… I’ve already been here,” he answered matter-of-factly. I realized I’d been ambushed by my dogged husband, too.

Moving inside, it took me a moment to adjust to the dark. I was still squinting a little when one of the little spotters ran up to Jeff’s foot, sniffed and start a happy dance. “

Oh,” he said scooping it up to eye level, “you remember me!?” He scratched both ears, rubbed it’s pudgy belly and turned to me with hopeful puppy-eyes. “It’s a boy….” Jeff offered, extending the little guy toward me.

I took him without fear, because, as I mentioned earlier, the pip squeaks weren’t ready to leave their momma, yet.

While Nannee was staying with us, Jeff was attempting to sort out his medical problems, as well.

In December 2003, his feet became too painful to walk on and moved from sometimes-pain to constant-pain. Original suggestions of taking time off for pain management and keeping his legs raised for two weeks straight had not helped.

By February 2004, Jeff was still off work and having to use his short-term then long-term disability benefit. The diagnosis of Diabetic Peripheral Neuropathy sparked a series of long trials attempting to ease the constant 7-8 pain rating on a scale of 1-10. On really bad days, when the pain jumped to a 10 or 11, Jeff used his sense of humor remained. He’d explain to me, his doctor, a nurse, anyone who really needed to know why he was moving so slow, “My dog’s are really barkin’!'”

That was in 2004. By the time Jeff passed away 2.5 years later, the number of drugs he needed to take had grown to over 20 daily, with many taken multiple times a day. Those cute little regular daily pill containers were uselessly too small, and only had compartments for morning, noon and night. Jeff creatively converted two tackle trays into his medication monitor. He’d fill them up once a week and it would take him about an hour.

I do believe having Nannee with us was more of a blessing for us than for her. Up until then, Jeff had been spending his days mostly alone, trying to handle the pain. Weekdays, we spent about 4 awake hours a day together – one in the morning and three at night. Weekends, though, we were inseparable, much like our 24 hours a day for two days courtship.

On one of those weekends, Jeff casually suggested we stop by a local farm where a new litter of Jack Russell puppies had been born. I reminded him we had a cat. He said we were just going to look, because they weren’t ready to leave their mother, yet. The only reason I agreed was that I knew there was no possibility we’d be taking one home.

My only previous puppy litter experience was gained in Tennessee. A friend’s dog had gotten out in a storm and had a clandestine canine affair. The adorable yelping squirmers were contained in a makeshift arena for adoption. It was entirely up to you whether you wanted to lean in and pet them, or not. With no intention of adding a dog to my life, I simply leaned in to scratch a few ears… and came up with Cab.